Oblivion: A Gorgeous Dissapointment

Joseph Kosinski's made quite a splash a few years ago when he directed the visually brilliant but ultimately empty Tron: Legacy. A movie with a flawless soundtrack, stunning special effects and gorgeously directed action set pieces was ultimately a letdown because of a convoluted and flawed plot and dull characters. With Oblivion, the director seems to continue that tradition.

Telling the story of Jack, a postapocalyptic repairman who has to protect gigantic nuclear reactors that help create energy for durable living on Titan, where humanity has fled after an alien invasion. Things start to go awry when Jack rescues a woman from a stranded spaceship.

The pacing of the story is deliberately slow, which is admirable for a big blockbuster, but because of its convoluted story, the slow pace often becomes bothersome, since the movie consists almost entirely of atmospheric shots of desolate wasteland, and, apart from the opening monologue of Jack, there is very little to no exposition in the first two acts. Other than that, the story is entirely unoriginal, gleefully borrowwing from Sci-Fi classics such as 2001 and The Matrix. And other than those high-concept sci-fi movies, Oblivion does not have some sort of interesting moral, or interesting thematic questions. The third act is completely ludicrous.


Tom Cruise does an adequate job playing Jack, but the character itself is flat and uninteresting, with only minor character traits to help us empathise with him. Said character traits are derivative and dull, fulfilling only the bare minimum of what would constitute for a fleshed out character. The main reason, the movie narrates in the beginning, is because Jack's memory was wiped at an earlier point. This is also something bothersome about the movie: it relies heavily on overused tropes such as amnesia. The other characters are equally dull, merely pawns to drive the story forward.


What partially saves Oblivion is Kosinsky's astonishing visual sensibilities. More than just good SFX, Kosinski has an almost flawless sense of shot composition, creating gorgeous imagery from beginning to end. The grand sets, from desolate desserts, to sprawling canyons, to Jack's floating house that seems like a marriage between the interior of an Apple Store and the Jetson's, Kosinsky creates a detailed postapocalyptic landscape that feels genuine, is majestic to behold and saves what would otherwise be a complete dud. Much like James Cameron, Kosinski seems uninterested in telling a captivating story, and more interested in creating new world's for audiences to get lost in. Like Tron: Legacy, before, the long, lingering shots of these world's never feel overindulgent, dull or unnecessary.


Another thing that is worth noting is the deliberate pace of Oblivion. While often bothersome because of the flawed plot, Oblivion's slow pace is a welcome change of pace from other Sci-Fi blockbusters that are becoming increasingly more hyperactive, with large casting lists and several subplots, Oblivion very much wants to be more like the slower, more intelligent Science-Fiction classics it so often borrows elements from. And while it obviously fails to do so because it lacks in interesting thematic content or deeper meaning, the movie does not wear you down like so many big-budget blockbusters do these days. Being an original movie and not a sequel of sorts, it does not have to contribute to some larger narrative like so many blockbusters do these days, introducing throwaway characters as fan service or having to tease for a sequel, Oblivion stands on its own.

Oblivion is an enjoyable movie. Cinephiles can enjoy the flawless imagery and the grand and sprawling world that Kosinsky presents to them, as long as they are able to ignore the glaring flaws of the movie in terms of plot and characters. The basic premise is derivative and ho-hum at best, but its functional enough to not take away from the design of Oblivion's post-apoclyptic earth. Anyone who enjoyed Tron: Legacy purely for its audiovisual grandeur, should definitely consider seeing Oblivion